


He Was A Good Man

by michaelLemieux



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M, also panic attack type stuff, trigger warning for vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4577604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michaelLemieux/pseuds/michaelLemieux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Hart was a good man. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Percival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynndyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/gifts).



Percival smiles proudly when he sees Roxanne in her bespoke suit. His heart swelled for the first time since James’s death in the old way it used to. The smile he gets in return is more than he could have hoped for.

He pulls Roxy into a tight hug that he only holds for a moment before releasing her to run off and show Eggsy.

His glasses twitter softly in his ear and a message plays across the lenses.

[Merlin: I won’t be in today.]

Percival’s eyes narrow at the text and takes in a deep breath, turning sharply on the heel of his oxfords, marching sharply towards the door.

This was not the day to miss work.

Not. Today.

The flurry of locomotion that it takes to arrive nearer to Merlin’s residence than the Kingsman mansion passed by in a flurry of prepared speeches and tongue lashings that Percival was fully prepared to give while cooking soup or some such necessity of sickness, which would not at all let Merlin off the hook, but would warrant some coddling. A miniscule amount, make no mistake, Percival was still pissed.

Three sharp raps at Merlin’s chamber door are all the warning Percival gives that he’s arrived at the flat. With pursed lips and a high chin, Percival lets himself in to the modest housing and swivels about in the entryway, looking for his fellow agent. There are sounds coming from his left.

The voice of the recently dead filters through the hallway and Percival follows it to an office of sorts, where a lavish desk and computer setup sits against an off-white wall, accompanied by a very comfortable chair which seems to have been shoved violently away from the desk. There’s a cup of tea on the desk next to the keyboard, and Percival touches it’s side tentatively. It’s ice cold, though this was obviously hot tea at some point, and with a tentative sniff and a finger dipped into the greenish liquid, he concludes it was made quite some time ago, and that it was peppermint tea. He recalled at some point Merlin saying he rarely drank peppermint tea, citing that it was a tea for the sickly or overwhelmed.

Finally, Percival allows his eyes to move upwards to a screen. The only one showing any video, or playing sound, is one of Harry Hart, the late Galahad. Percival had had great respect for him, and was grateful for all that he’d done for James over the years. There had also been a few very thoughtful remarks made to him by Harry after the death of Lancelot. Percival had appreciated it almost enough to not pester him by buttoning his bottom button. That, however, would have seemed soft of him. He could not have that.

The current feed playing was of what seemed to be a honey pot mission. Harry was certainly touching the young woman quite a bit, and the easy laughter coming from the both of them implied possible inebriation. It sounded very natural and the woman seemed relaxed in Harry’s presence.

Percival watches the woman’s face, Harry’s hand reaching out to her and brushing a thumb past her cheek as he waxed poetic lines of Brown to her. It made for a very charming situation and Percival could understand better the look of adoration in the woman’s eye.

A noise comes from somewhere else in the flat and calls Percival’s attention away from the video feed. He takes a moment to pause it before investigating.

Without the video’s noise, it becomes obvious that somewhere in the flat someone is retching quite horrendously.

Perhaps Percival will be making soup after all.

The door to the bathroom is ajar and a weak looking Merlin is curled over the toilet, his fingers white knuckling the rim of the bowl. He hasn’t bothered with a button up shirt, instead bare chested with a soft looking jumper lying half in the shower where Percival can assume it was discarded before Merlin descended upon the loo. As Percival watches silently for a moment, assessing Merlin’s state, he notes bare toes peeking out from track pants that twitch each time Merlin’s torso contracts and he spits bile before heaving in breaths that he cannot take as he’s lost to the retching.

The smell of sick curls Percival’s lip, but he forces down his own disgust and kneels beside Merlin, a hand hovering over the skin pulled taut across muscle and shoulder blade as muscles flex and contract. Finally he rests his fingertips against clammy skin, pulling in to one point and splaying out routinely.

Merlin had taken notice of Percival’s appearance, and graced him with a brief glance before his eyes rolled upwards behind his lids and he curled forwards again, so there was no surprised flinch when Percival touched him, only more greedily gasped breaths and full body tremors.

Eventually, Merlin slumps a final time over the bowl of the toilet. His skin is deathly pale, eyes red rimmed from more than crying, and he cannot seem to keep his eyes open. Without a word, Percival gently helps a woosy Merlin to his feet and props him against the wall of the bathroom near the sink. He helps to wash out the last of the bile, and cleans off the spit and sweat from his chest. An unbidden thought of what a nice chest it is, invades Percival’s thoughts and he banishes it with an internal scowl. He hobbles with Merlin to the bedroom and lays him down, careful to make sure his path back to the bathroom was not impeded by anything should the need arise again.

It’s at least an hour later that Merlin rejoins the land of the living, and by then the fit seems to have passed, but Percival knows well enough that he shouldn’t mention Harry. His previous anger at the Scott has returned, despite the compromising position he’d been found in. The anger had morphed from disappointment that Merlin had not shown up to see Roxy don her Kingsman suit for the first time, to ire that he purposefully suffered through this alone despite knowing full well that all Kingsman agents were supposed to be a tight knit group there to support and help each other, never mind the best in the world psychiatric and medical facility the organization had access to.

Merlin hobbles to the kitchen table and Percival rises silently from the living room to join him, sitting beside his Jiminy Cricket. The voice people claim to have heard in their head that tells them right from wrong to him was a bald Scott with a shite sense of humour sitting near him. He’s pale and shivery, in need of some sort of help, but anything that would come out of Percival’s mouth would be of no help to either of them. Instead, he lays a hand on Merlin’s shoulder.

When he has complete control of his tongue again, he forces out a mere, “Harry Hart… was a good man.”

 

 


	2. Eggsy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set a few months after chapter one.

“Are you really going to answer your phone right now, cuz?” Jamal asks in an accusing tone.

Eggsy gives his friends a winning smile to cover and answers his phone with a spiteful flourish.

Before he can get through the customary ‘Hello’ there’s a loud voice in his ear. He must have visibly flinched because he sees Jamal’s hackles go up out of the corner of his eye. Ryan is giving him the ‘totally not worried’ face and cracking some one-liner Eggsy doesn’t hear over the angry Scot in his ear.

“--the bloody heck were you thinking--” he hears when he tunes in to what Merlin is saying.

The gist of it, he assumes, is that Merlin couldn’t be in immediate contact, had a few drinks, and panicked. It’d happened a time or two since V-Day, and Eggsy now knew the tone of voice Merlin used when he was scared. He never thought it was possible in the first place. Merlin was always calm and collected. Never panicked, frightened, or unsure.

“Calm down, will you? I’ll be in in a minute, alright?”

Jamal sighs dramatically and Ryan throws up his hands in defeat.

“Just when we thought you had a night off,” Ryan groans, slumping back against his seat.

Eggsy gives him an apologetic look and waits until he hears the affirmative from Merlin before hanging up and standing.

“Sorry, bruvs. Shop owners had a break in, I gotta go help him out.”

The look on Jamal’s face means either that Eggsy’s not as good a liar as he thinks he is, or he’s pissed in general for being dumped on the one night Eggsy came out to meet them.

“Cuz, he’s best be payin’ you your weight in pounds,” Jamal grumbles, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest with a huff. “Them perks you was talkin’ ‘bout had better be damn good.”

Eggsy grins widely at his friend and gives him a half hearted salute that Jamal chuffs off, while Ryan waves him off with a put-upon smile.

The ride back to base takes forever. Without Harry to fill the space of the elevator and speak over the grinding gears, the ride takes ten millenia. The endless shifting of bricks that surround him on all sides make Eggsy nervous now that he’s begun making this journey alone, and the atrium at the bottom could not have been a sweeter release. The bullet train that speeds through the underground at unimaginable speeds seems dull and stagnant. Nothing but sleep passes Eggsy by quickly.

Merlin is not waiting for him at the tram’s end, but Eggsy finds him in his ‘office’. It’s really just a room with a great many computers for Merlin to fuss with. Eggsy’s never begrudged him having his own space, but he’d really rather Merlin stop hiding away here where if he passes out from exertion or some such, Eggsy is forced to drag him a full bloody kilometre through the halls to Merlin’s sleeping quarters.

Blessedly, Eggsy finds Merlin awake, and (perhaps not so blessedly) coherent. If that’s a word you can use for it.

“Eggsy, for fuck’s sake,” he’s muttering to himself as he paces before the computers. On one of the screens is a feed titled ‘Galahad’ and it’s not Eggsy’s.

‘ _I’ll sort this mess out when I get back_ ,’ makes it’s way into Eggsy’s ears and before attending to Merlin, he stops the recording in it’s tracks.

When it halts, Merlin does as well, and soon there’s a heavy gaze on Eggsy’s back.

Never once has the codename Galahad passed Merlin’s lips since the end of V-Day. With the inheritance of the Kingsman organization at hand, there is no higher power to enforce the long held tradition of using the Knight’s codenames. Merlin chooses now not to address Eggsy in that manner. He’s mentioned it as a form of protest, but has not offered another name than Merlin, nor ceased referring to Roxy as Lancelot. It’s just Eggsy. Just Harry.

\---

The shock wore off with the adrenaline.

For Eggsy, that meant he went on a bender in the name of ‘celebration’ and returned to his mother off his head with two bottles of whiskey and half a kilo of Malteasers. He talked until his tongue went numb about the fact that he couldn’t tell his mum about what happened, and then led into a speech on how he’s failed both Harry and his father. He never finished that particular spiel because he was interrupted by a harsh slap to his cheek. The cathartic night of debauchery and talking helped Eggsy bypass most of the grief stages, and heavy drinking added onto throwing himself into work helped him through the rest. He was slowly easing out of workaholic mode, and began letting himself be alone to his thoughts again.

Merlin, however, was not so lucky as to have Eggsy’s starling coping mechanisms. He suffered panic attacks of extreme severity and, without the aid of a higher official to force him back into work whether he was ready or not, an age of despondency and depression. With the aid of forced company and a headlong fall into work, the worst of the panic attacks subsided. Merlin fell back into the routine of trudging his way through work regardless of his own emotional state, and forfeited his own grieving cycle once again for the sake of the organization. However, without Charles there to govern his work and snap at him for letting his emotions get in the way, he was slightly worse at it this go around. Where when Lancelot passed on, he could rely on Harry for sympathies and Arthur for work, he had neither and so forcing himself back into the outline of ‘Merlin’ was less than stellar. On the whole, he was rather good at it, as he had been during  V-Day, but there were still episodes during times of peace.

\---

“Merlin. Mate. Stop doin’ this to me, alright? There ain’t no more work to be done on him, just let it lie.”

Eggsy knows full well that Merlin’s trigger is related to the remaining video and audio feeds of Harry Hart. They should have been filed away with the rest of his body of work, but Merlin seems hellbent on reviewing them over and over. It causes a panic attack nearly every time, though they seem to be getting less violent and harmful to him. Eggsy’s been thanking his lucky stars for that.

Eggsy turns about to face him again, and Merlin’s eyes shift to the screen behind his back.

“Ain’t nothin’ gonna bring him back,” Eggsy murmurs, considering his options and then moving forward.

He pulls Merlin down to his level with fingers laced about the back of his neck. They’re cheek to cheek for a moment, long enough for Merlin to blink, realize where he is, inhale, and drop his forehead onto Eggsy’s shoulders. His arms coming about the boy’s middle and hover against the fabric of his hoodie.

“Right,” he breathes.

 

 


End file.
